Blog Best Bits 2001

So, let's start with the very first blog posting. It is as embarrassing to read now as it was to write it then. How marvellous.
12 JULY
I wish to emphasize that glitch art is in many ways opposite
to its better-known cousin, namely "fractal art".
Here's a table of differences and similarities, to give the
pretence of scientific rigour.

GLITCH ART                                   FRACTAL ART
------ ---                                   ------- ---

artificial                                   mathematical

fun and vacuous                              attracts geeks

purely digital                               digital and continuous

found                                        usually computed

deterministic and quasi-random               chaotic

fast - instant gratification                 slow to compute

tiny following (me and a friend)             massively popular 1985-1995

23 AUGUST
My birthday today. I think I'll have _two_ Prozac today to celebrate.



28 AUGUST
Some trippy glitch art today. You're in a magical forest and
you've been eating mushrooms all day. 
Source: GBA demo.



06 SEPTEMBER
Had a cool time in Berlin. I feel inspired by the architecture -
wonderful straight clean lines! 
This picture is a bit of RAM from my PC. I used Visual C++'s debugger
to put the data values into a text file, and then wrote a little MATLAB
script to convert the data into a picture matrix. Then a bit of hand-tweaking
in Photoshop, because this is Glitch *Art*, remember. It actually has to look
good too! My motivation for highlighting the yellow bits was to make it look
like a skyscraper at night. The flat areas on either side are a bit like
vertical clouds. Haven't you ever seen vertical clouds?



16 SEPTEMBER
I've been addicted to playing chess on a BBC Model B emulator
all week! Bloody amazing, which is more than can be said for
my chess acumen. And Chucky Egg!!! But it gets way too scary
when the big fat duck-type-thing escapes from the cage.
Anyway, the cool thing about these old-fashioned progs is that
they're quite shonky and I caught this glitch when a game was
loaded. I tweaked the colours, as usual, and I've decided
that it now represents a stripe of digital toothpaste
with a fresh minty-aqua taste. Very refreshing.



03 OCTOBER
Mucking around with the timing of NESticle can produce some
nice FX. This one looks kinda Japanese-y...funny characters
enscribed in blood!
PS://I'm very stressed-out by this house-buying torture! 



23 OCTOBER
IE 5.00.2014.0216 layer glitch/bug. (Artificially aged.) It's perfectly normal
to have an emotional response when viewing this image. If concerned,
please consult your family doctor.


PRINTTOUTT

25 OCTOBER
I could tell you how I got this glitch pic, but then I'd have to hoover
your brains out. Let's just say it's yet another region of juicy RAM from
my trusty PC. It's an exercise for the reader to determine the starting address.


PLEATSPACE

29 NOVEMBER
Ever wondered what happens when Satan possesses a Sinclair ZX Spectrum? Me too.
That reminds me - Satan is an anagram of Santa, so let me the first to wish
you all a very Happy Glitchmas.
The emulator I used to capture this was "Z80 v3.03" by G.A. Lunter.


SATANSPECTRUMDIEDIEDIE666

09 DECEMBER
Starting to get nervous about this Oslo Glitch Festival/Symposium.
Took me two hours today to find a Norwegian phrasebook. That's an omen.
I've cleverly managed to find all three phrases I'll be needing:

Hei, God dag  == Hi, how's it going?
Øl, takk == Beer, thanks
Kan du få bort denne flekken? == Can you get this stain out?

Also, I need to somehow get a laptop PC so I can do some "live glitching".
Anyone fancing donating theirs for me to practise on? I thought not.
Thing is, I haven't really got anything particularly deep or pretentious to say
about glitch art. I mean, it's just about pictures, and you either like them
or not. So for this thing I thought I'd just do some glitches, and otherwise
remain pretty much silent.

Is a VIC20 powerful enough to launch a nuclear missile? Now look at this
screenshot. Think again. Imagine if everbody's brains were memory-mapped.
You could just go around POKEing random stuff into their heads and induce
digital paranoia.


WIDE FONT TERROR

13 DECEMBER
I've borrowed a laptop PC off Andy at work. It was the company's,
but he rescued it from being thrown in the bin. It's a P90. Hmmm.
And the screen fades out after 25 minutes. Hmmmm. And it's only
got a 256-colour video RAM. Hmmmm. Still, who needs more colours
when doing a digital art presentation :)

Anyway, never mind all that. Here's today's instalment of digital delight.
It's one of the glitch pics in my BEFLIX/PENDING folder, but
unfortunately I can't remember how I got it. So, in the absence of a story,
just imagine a time when you were happy, perhaps walking along the
beach on a hot sunny day. But don't fall asleep or I'll delete your brain.


CECTI
On to 2002 >>>